Social responsibility. That was the phrase that passed through my brain as I stood -naked from the waist down- in my bathtub on the evening of May 18, 2011. My kids were both sleeping and my wife was out for the evening which left me plenty of time to get down to business. I had with me everything I thought I would need for that night's Main Event: a mirror, shaving cream, my Gillette Mach 3 razor (with slightly used blade) and my beard trimmer. While to some this might sound like some kind of kinky sex game (there's got to be somebody out there with a shaving fetish) to me it was very serious. After twenty-nine years of gloriously uninterrupted growth I was now in the unenviable (from my point of view) position of having to shave my own balls. I mean in the grand scale of things it's just shaving a bunch of pubes, but to put into into perspective imagine your body's timeline proportionally to the Earth: shaving my bush would be equivalent to clear cutting a 3.3 billion year old rain forest. Who knows how many thousands of wondrous, undiscovered species were wiped out in that massacre on that cool, May evening. Scientists may never know the full environmental impact of my actions that night.
Rewind to five months earlier. I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting for the urologist to come in. I suppose I've been lucky not having spent a lot of time with doctors or waiting in their offices, but perhaps this lack of familiarity is what added to my nervousness. I wasn't nervous about the reason I was there: I was driven by a sense of purpose and clarity I had not experienced in some time. This must be how an alcoholic feels visiting the liquor store in one of his rare moments of semi-sobriety. I wasn't concerned about the content of the visit, but rather the minutia of navigating this unfamiliar social situation. I always tend to freak myself out by sweating all the details and trying to calculate all the permutations of what could possibly go wrong or go off the preconceived social scripts.
The urologist finally came in, though he did little to ease my anxiety. He was cool, business-like, and lacked what in my mind would have been considered "bedside manner" in the traditional sense. The whole appointment couldn't have lasted more than five minutes, roughly forty percent of which involved me standing in the middle of a cold examination room with another man's hand on my cock. So, I guess aside from the doctor's office a typical Friday night (there, I beat you to it, Adam). The doc came in and made no attempt at small talk before asking me to unzip. The whole time I had been waiting in the room I'd been eyeing the table under the assumption that that was where my hairy nutsack would make its appearance. After years of television shows depicting women visiting their OBGYN's and sitting on a table, their legs in stirrups and their naked lower halves tastefully covered by a medical sheet, I expected the same five star treatment for my man meat. So I was kind of taken aback when I was unceremoniously ordered to "pull down my pants and underwear." In the middle of the room. Standing up.
Well, after suddenly being bumped back from first class to coach I hesitated. Well, that and the fact that I wasn't used to standing in the middle of a room and exposing my 100% all-beef meat stick for the world to gaze upon in all of it's glory. Irritated, the urologist repeated his order as if I hadn't understood or was a kid or something (although hopefully he's not out there asking a lot of kids to pull their pants down). I was kind of insulted, but I wanted to play it cool and not start any shit by saying something like "I heard you the first time, you condescending fuck! It just takes me a couple seconds to get my fucking belt undone, you slimy sack of fermented shit!" which might have been a slight overreaction, and not really indicative of my true feelings about the experience.
So I was standing there with my pants around my ankles holding up the bottom of my shirt with another man fondling my John Thomas and his hairy twins having a conversation about my vasectomy. I remember quite clearly that he inspected both of my balls quite aggressively before informing me of the practicalities of the procedure. This is where my anxiety over the whole affair really began. Any information he may have provided me with that day about the medical nuances of the procedure, the recovery, or the success rate was eclipsed by the fact that I would have to shave my Big Lebowski the day before the surgery. I don't know why this stuck with me, but the thought of having to shave down their conjured up strange feelings of terror. I was especially concerned with shaving my fuzzy peaches as they seemed a particular challenging obstacle. I mean, not only is it in a very hard to reach place with zero visibility, but the skin on the testicles is loose and wrinkly and seems like prime fodder for razor-related accidents. I imagined it like trying to shave a pair of prunes, only softer and filled with blood and semen, without breaking the surface. Before I had time to voice my (potentially neurotic) concerns the doctor had already finished his exam, described the procedure and confirmed that I did indeed "want the surgery."
After leaving the exam room I checked with the nurse at the front desk to confirm my appointment which ended up being on May 19... a date of no specific importance to anyone unless you're the headless ghost of Anne Boleyn. I was kind of bummed because I was hoping that I would be able to get my vasectomy sooner so I wouldn't be as worried about spawning a third, unwanted offspring. That is not to say that the first two were unwanted, because that's simply not the case. We love the first two. Two is a good number. We planned the second birth (if you can call a buying a case of Heineken and forgetting to wear a rubber "planning"). And at my son's birth my wife and I were very sure of two things: 1) That we loved the little tyke and 2) That we most definitely, under any circumstances, did not want any more fucking children.
Perhaps this sounds callous or harsh or unparently, but it's the truth. If by some perversion of fate we were to have another child we would still love the little guy or girl, but I still wouldn't have wanted it and would have to reconcile those feelings for the rest of my natural life. There might be some out there who say that love knows no bounds and there's always more metaphorical room in your heart for more love, but I have learned through experience that this is simply not the case. I now know that my hear contains only a finite amount of love, and the amount allocated to any biological offspring I might have has already been divied up between my two kids and there is none left to give. In fact, I'm pretty fucking sure that at twenty-nine years old I have already determined the limits of my love and they're not that big. The truth is that I am not alone in this. People don't have infinite amounts of love. Love is not infinite. People are not infinite beings. Humans are temporal, finite creatures with limits. I can't love everyone all the time. That's fucking impossible. I'm at the point in my life now where the boat is full up and any new stowaways mean booting somebody else into the icy cold waters. If I made any new friends or had any new kids, I'd have to get rid of another of equal or lesser value to make some room.
The simple fact was,my wife and I didn't want any more kids. So we were taking steps to ensure it would never, ever happen. It's called being a responsible human being. Responsible parenting is shaving your balls at ten o'clock at night sitting on the edge of a bathtub with a mirror between your legs so you can see parts of yourself you never wanted to see clearly in bright, 100 watt light. It's getting government funded surgery to have my vas deferentia severed and then sealed in order to prevent my sperm from entering my ejaculate. To the Catholic church I'm sure that any form of birth control (outside of the bafflingly naive natural family planning theory) especially that involving surgery is seen as an abomination for some reason. Yet another example of how organized religion and logical reasoning seem to be able to peacefully coexist without the former ever having any real contact with the latter. (But I suppose that's another discussion for another time and another place when I'm not quite as drunk... However in the interest of peaceful coexistence I am willing to make a deal with the Catholic church: I will recant all my ramblings about your backwards religion if your priests stop fucking little boys.) But really, as a responsible human being and parent this kind of contraception is the only logical thing to do. And I'll tell you why.
First of all, you will,in all likelihood, be a shitty parent. This is not a personal indictment of your character, it is simply a well-known but often-forgotten fact. Most people are simply not mentally or emotionally competent enough to have and raise children (keep in mind this important distinction that many people don't think or talk about -"having" children and "raising" children). That's not a bad thing. For a long time our culture has constructed our identity in relation to the nuclear family and our ability to have children. Being fertile was a bonus. This was all well and good when you needed cheap labour for your farm so you'd have your wife pump out five more kids to help you work it, or when the world's population was at an easily sustainable amount somewhere in the hundreds of millions, and the average life expectancy was around eighteen. But times change. Societies evolve. People like to fuck. A lot. And those goddamn doctors keep finding ways to extend our lives despite humanities best efforts to destroy itself. The point is that archaic rules set down thousands of years ago have little to no practical application in our day to day lives.
So my first advice to people who ask me (because it happens all the time) if they should have kids is: don't. Don't have kids. You probably won't enjoy it. They require a great deal of financial and social sacrifices, incredible levels of physical and mental endurance, and to top it all off they're fucking messy. Unless changing shit-filled diapers by lamplight through half-opened eyes at three in the morning sounds like your idea of fun. Unless cleaning puke off yourself for the fifth time today sounds like a great time. Unless having your time and attention monopolized by a smaller version of yourself who is unable to contribute either economically or intellectually to the house makes your panties a little wetter.
And, let's be honest, the odds are that you probably won't be any good at being a parent. Being a good parent requires a lot ow hard work and personal sacrifices that you're probably too selfish to give up, or at least not without horribly resenting the person foremost responsible (Or I guess second most responsible if you don't count that one night of unprotected sex when your drunken sperm somehow made it to that egg even though you never made it to the bathroom and ended up waking up in a pool of (what you hope) is vomit) for the rest of your natural life, unless that person becomes a plastic surgeon or a divorce attorney or wins the lottery and gives you a shit-ton of money out of some twisted sense of social obligation despite your years of terrible parenting and bitter resentment. Think back not only on your own childhood, but also on all the stories your friends have told you about theirs. Now think about how many of you had shitty childhoods not due to random acts of fortune such as car accidents, alien abductions or clown-related muggings (Hey, it happens more often than you'd think.). Many experts agree* that the percentage of positive, healthy childhoods is around 20%. (*This has yet to be confirmed.)
The simple fact of the matter is that most people are simply not cut out to be parents. Below is a simple mix and match of the majority of people who eventually wind up as parents. Some people:
1. Think they want children, but
2. Know they want children, but
3. Don't think they want children, but
4. Know for a fact from the very core of
their being that they don't want children, but
a) really have no fucking clue.
b) aren't emotionally mature enough raise a child.
c) have no business being allowed within 100 feet of a child.
d) will do it anyway to make their significant other happy.
e) will do it anyway because of social expectations.
f) will foolishly have unprotected sex, knowing full well the potential consequences.
g) will get drunk and have unprotected sex, not fully cognisant of the consequences whatsoever.
Perhaps this seems like kind of a harsh indictment of your mom even though I don't know you (and probably don't want to) but I think that if you really think about it most people are either not equipped to have children or just plain don't want to.
This is not a bad thing.
My wife and I entered into our marriage knowing that we both wanted to have children. This seems like an odd point to mention, but you'd be surprised at how often this debate comes up with married couples we know. I don't know how this conversation couldn't possibly have come up before the wedding if you, oh I don't know, talked to your fucking future husband/wife for more than thirty minutes. Having kids is a pretty heavy commitment -arguably (and actually) more important than signing over the exclusive rights to your genitals for the rest of your life. Bringing a new human life into the world is a huge responsibility and not a choice to be made lightly like picking Coke or Pepsi (Which I suppose is really no choice at all unless you liked all those stupid Pepsi commercials with the Coke and Pepsi truck drivers and like drinking shit.). My wife and I talked early on about having children and about how many we wanted (though those first naive calculations quickly went out the window after the birth of my daughter) as it seemed like a pretty make-it-or-break-it bargaining point.
So to sum up point number one, you (yes, you) shouldn't have children because you're probably too selfish and your kids will probably turn out fucked up because of your half-assed parenting because you didn't want them in the first place. However, if you still somehow believe that you will be a good parent and are as prepared as you can be to raise that child then let me remind you of the larger social concerns at play. Think globally. The world's population is currently just under seven billion people. In scientific terms that's a lot of fucking people (hey, that works on two levels). "Sure," you might say to yourself, "but what does the human race have to do with me? I wasn't the idiot who created it." True as that may be, this massive population of semi-intelligent primates does have some long lasting, potentially devastating consequences. I suppose there have been harbingers of doom ranting nonsense about the End of the World for centuries, but we're at a point in our history now where we've gathered vast amounts of data, posted that data on the Internet, and are able to take that data out of context to support any conclusions we may draw with surprising accuracy. However, it doesn't take a genius to see that the current global population of around 6.8 billion homo sapiens is beginning to put tremendous strain on the environment (Didn't any of you watch Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH? Nobody? Really?) not to mention resources like food and fresh water which we, uh, need to survive. (Check out
A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright to get a good idea of how we keep shooting ourselves in the foot and the potential consequences of our inability to think about the future.)
So as a responsible citizen of the planet Earth if you are in any way unsure about having children it is your duty not to have any. Why the hell would you contribute to a growing global crisis by putting strain on an already strained supply of limited resources by creating another mouth to feed that you're not even sure you even want? Does this sound as crazy to anybody else as it does to me?
OK so now you've decided that you are indeed ready to raise a child and you selfishly ignore the world's problems and you decide -against my best advice, mind you- to go ahead and have children anyway then could you at least do the rest of us a favour. Have a logical number of children, somewhere between 0 and 2. Even two is pushing it. Zero and one are really the most socially responsible options for parents because that way you get to have your little pooping bundle of joy (seriously, my daughter has taken some monster shits that I honestly wouldn't have believed could have come from a three-year-old had I not witnessed it myself),you're still producing more consumers to keep our economy going, and you're also helping to lower the world's population in the long run thereby lessening the burden on our dwindling energy and food supplies. At two children you're basically showing that you're at best indifferent to the whole thing and not ballooning the population, but not lessening it either. If you have three or more kids you're basically just an asshole. What? It's not supposed to be funny. It's fucking true.
So really my decision to get a vasectomy was just me doing my small part to help the world. I could not stand by and add to this blatant overpopulation continue unabated. I was doing my small part to give to the world by taking away my sperm (Which, according to the literature, would be reabsorbed back into my body. This in turn led me to wonder if all that extra sperm that wasn't being ejaculated into my wife or a dirty sock or a crumpled wad of toilet paper being reabsorbed into my body would actually give me some kind of biological edge. Maybe even super powers. Who knows what kind of long term effects all that reabsorbed sperm might have on a human being? Maybe with my body cannibalizing all that extra sperm I would have more energy, be able to go longer without food or water, be stronger and faster. No longer will I waste my valuable sperm on women. I will keep it all for myself and finally achieve my true potent(ial). I could be a superhero: Sperm Man, The Sperminator, The Human Sperm, Captain Sperm. I don't know, the name still needs some work.)
On May 19th I was laying in another room, this time in the hospital. I was wearing a hospital gown pulled up far enough to reveal my shaved cock and balls while the urologist and the nurse did their thing to my thing. Once again the doctor seemed to lack a little bedside manner, though he was a little more open than when I had seen him last. I suppose I couldn't blame him if he was a little cranky: I would be too if I had to handle other men's dicks all day long. I was almost disappointed at how callously he treated my pork sword, like it was just another inanimate object, although in retrospect this was probably for the best. The procedure involved going in through the balls, so he tossed my shaft aside like a teenager tossing a Big Mac at McDonalds: with the mundane casualness that comes with routine. He seemed almost bored as he slathered my pubic region in some kind of brown antiseptic. Although I couldn't see his face, I could tell he was almost bored as he stabbed a giant needle into my left kiwi to freeze it.
Now, the only other time I've had any part of my body frozen was for dental work. Once when I got a couple teeth pulled I had my gums frozen, but this time was different. When I had my gums frozen I could feel that they were frozen. I could sense that absence of feeling. But this time I couldn't tell that anything was frozen. I couldn't feel that I couldn't feel my testicles. I had no idea what was going on until the doctorb (the "B" is for "bargain!") told me he was going to start on the other side. All I ever felt was the original needle going in, which although wasn't that bad, was still not a great feeling to have in the old punching bags.
The whole procedure itself only lasted about fifteen minutes. I actually spent more time in the waiting room that in the exam room. After it was all done I was sent to the bathroom to clean up all the antiseptic shit off of my cream-filled ding dong and put my clothes back on. As I stood in the bathroom naked from the waist down and cleaning that gunk off of my schlong, I was once again struck my the hairless state of it. I remember the night before looking at my kosher pickle in the mirror and being reminded of one of those rubber chickens you always see in joke shops. Without hair he looked kind of sad and lonely, like a tree without leaves, or a Marty McFly without his (stylish yet practical) orange, life preserver vest.
Afterwards I went back out to the waiting room where I had to... wait. For fifteen minutes. Just in case there was any excessive bleeding. From my penis. Let me fucking tell you something:
any bleeding from my penis is too much. After I got the OK my wife drove me home where I proceeded to hunker down and build my nest in the basement where I would be staying for the next few days. Because you see, it wasn't over yet. You're not supposed to shower for three days after the procedure. I'm not sure why you're not supposed to get your family jewels wet. Maybe something to do with infection. Either way, I was going to make damn sure not to disobey the doctor's orders. No showering for three days. No heavy lifting for three days. No sexual intercourse for seven days. (Well after six years of marriage that lat one shouldn't be too hard... oh wait... I just made myself sad...)
So in light of my pre(dick)ament I did the only responsible thing I could think of: holed myself up in the basement with a bunch of chocolate and proceeded to play video games for 72 straight hours. I know the doctor said no strenuous activity, but being the responsible fellow that I was I wasn't going to take any chances. I would do absolutely no activity, just to be on the safe side. This wasn't as easy as you might think. I mean, I had to dodge not only chores and personal hygiene, but also a wife and kids, all without moving. And despite all my wife's frustration about three days of having to do all of the chores, cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing, I'm sure she'll be grateful that whenever I park my Batmobile in her dark, wet Batcave there will be no Batbabies nine months down the line. And on the plus side, I really busted out my Xbox gamer score. I'm now over 10,000. I'm sure even my wife -an ardent non-gamer- can see the significance of that achievement.
Besides which, I would have been pretty useless anyway. A vasectomy offers a strange sort of pain. Sometimes when you're lying there not moving, pumped full of both Advil and Tylenol with a soggy bag of half-frozen peas on your crotch, you suddenly notice how you're not really feeling any pain in the old tube steak and you fool yourself into thinking that maybe you're one tough motherfucker and that it's really not all that painful. And then you try to get up and move, and it turns out you're wrong. It wasn't a sharp pain, and wasn't in the testicles themselves where the incisions were made. It was a more general pain in your abdomen, the same kind of feeling like when you get kicked in the ball sack. It was here I started to notice that despite their constant berating of men for no knowing anything about them, women know surprisingly little about men. Every time I had to explain my pain to a man, I simple told them "It's like getting kicked in the nuts." They'd wince or nod their head. When I told that to my wife or her friends, I kind of got that I-don't-know-what-that-means-but-I'll-laugh-to-be-friendly laugh, and I found myself explaining the pain of getting nailed right in the old bacon bazooka, and that the real pain isn't down there it's slightly North, right in your guts. The first time I had to take a shit was not pleasant, having to push with the muscles in my lower abdomen.
While we're on the subject I did notice another gender-related phenomenon related to my vasectomy. Whenever I was talking to my wife's female friends about the procedure they would inevitably ask about the pain, which I would describe for them. Now almost every time after I described my pain to a woman I would invariably be met with the response "Well, I'll bet it's not as bad as giving birth." And I'd think to myself
Wow. Let the record state that I never once, ever tried to compare getting a vasectomy with giving birth to a living, breathing human being. I never even tried to insinuate it. In giving my description of my pain it never even occurred to me that there was a parallel between the two. I don't know why women felt the need to draw this comparison. Maybe it's because of this bizarre concept of The Battle of the Sexes, where men and women are somehow ideologically at war with one another. Or maybe women have this chip on their collective shoulder and they feel that having a corner on pain and suffering sets them on some moral high ground. Well I'm not going to argue with you. If you're trying to get into an argument about whose life is shittier, then that's an argument I don't particularly care to win. If you say you have more suffering and pain in your life, I'm not going to contradict you. You probably do. I will not try to take away your cross. You can carry it with you the rest of life for all I care. You win this one, ladies. Of course, hearing about (and actually witnessing -twice) how painful childbirth is it still didn't change the fact that my balls were aching and it was fucking uncomfortable. Amazingly hearing about somebody else's pain didn't help to ease mine at all. (And I thought you people were supposed to be all empathetic and shit.)
Although, I can't really blame women if they feel bitter about shit. Another thing that was pointed out to me was some inherent institutionalized sexism within the medical establishment. The cost of my vasectomy was approximately $0 because I (currently (which means currently at the time of writing this article)) reside in Ontario, Canada which means that this particular medical procedure is covered by OHIP, a form of governmental health insurance which means that if I'm poor I don't have to die in the street of an easily curable medical problem like I would in the United States with its archaic and highly inefficient private insurance/health care system. The corresponding surgery for women -a much more invasive procedure involving "tying off" the fallopian tubes- is also covered under the same insurance plan, however, typical birth control techniques like birth control pills, the morning after pill or IUD's (Intrauterine Devices) -all products for women- will cost you a chunk of change.
But anyway. The pain wasn't so bad if you kept still. The other other part of the whole after effects was kind of psychological. By the end of the first day there was some obvious swelling, and some bruising on my right nut. By morning of the second day my entire right testicle was completely black and blue and bruised to shit. Now, had I seen that same bruising anywhere else on my body, I would have brushed it off like the next TRANSFORMERS movie*, but it really is disconcerting to see your already sad, naked little soldier now those unnatural shades. Not only that, but I don't know if you've shaved your pubic region before, but it's really fucking uncomfortable as the hair grows back in. I don't know if it's the same kind of discomfort for chicks, but for dudes we have a lot of different surfaces dangling down there rubbing against each other in the dark, and really short hair like that feels like Velcro rubbing between your thighs and your balls. That was not fun at all. And then there was the smell. After two days of not showering, or really changing my clothes, I was getting a really good stink building up in my underwear which I found impressive but my wife found "fucking disgusting" and made me go upstairs and change my clothes. Then I figured for the sake of preventing possible infections I should air my blood sausage out for a couple hours. Let me tell you, there is nothing like playing
Fallout 3 laying on your couch with your package hanging out there. It was so liberating, and I'm pretty sure my gaming ability improved. So from now on you can be pretty sure that if you ever play a game with me online, I'm most likely going to be playing with my pants off.
(*Suck it, DARK OF THE MOON)
Anyway, long story short, it took me about two weeks to really get back in the swing of things with relatively no discomfort. The first time I jerked off (exactly seven days after the procedure) it actually kind of hurt a little when I came. I was relieved, however, that A) My erection was unaffected and still rock fucking hard, B) I still blew a nice load, and C) My penis didn't fall off (Which is a concern any time something unusual happens down there. What, you don't worry about that? You've never had the dream?). After a couple times of yanking my own crank, everything seemed to level out. Then a couple weeks later I finally got a full field test when I slipped my wife a slice of my pepperoni pizza. Everything went smoothly, though it still kind of sucks right now because condoms are still part of the equation. For any of you out there who are thinking of getting a vasectomy or who've had one and didn't read the instructions, it apparently can take up to ten weeks or longer for your semen to be completely sperm-free. So even though the doc had reprogrammed my Cockatron 2000 not to upload sperm during coitus for the next couple months I'll still have to slip on a rubber when dipping my double stuff Oreo into her glass of milk. It kind of sucks. I don't find condoms as comfortable as I used to, and I seem to be extra sensitive to the rubbery latex smell which I never noticed before either. It must be my new super sperm powers. Ten weeks after the vasectomy have to jerk off into a cup -for medical purposes this time- and have it tested to make sure that in the the battle of man versus sperm man has emerged victorious.
The only other thing that really struck me about the whole experience was a sense of buyer's remorse which I just can't seem to shake. I remember even as a kid feeling this strange sense of guilt whenever I bought something, even when it was something that I really, really wanted. Part of it was the fear that the product might not live up to my expectations and part of it was making a definite decision about utilizing a finite resource. Buying one thing I wanted meant not buying ten other things I wanted just as bad. By buying that one product it was like telling myself I couldn't buy that other shit, which all of the sudden seemed like a better deal by comparison. I don't regret getting the surgery done at all. I don't want to have any more kids and start back at ground zero. Every diaper I change now is one less I will ever have to change in my entire life. If my wife left me or died and I somehow managed to start another relationship, I would not want to have kids again. My mind is made up. It's just the psychology of wanting what you can't have even though you don't even really want it. Just knowing that I was getting a (most likely) irreversible procedure that would prevent me from creating more children all of the sudden made me anxious. I don't like to be told what I can't do, and often have the urge to do the exact opposite of what I'm told just on principle alone.
Which lead me down another road. A couple my wife and I know are trying to get pregnant for the second time. The first time the wife had to take all kinds of drugs and injections and shit just so they could get pregnant, and this time it's not looking very good for them at all. As I sat coalescing in my basement after my vasectomy I pondered what this couple's thoughts -and the thoughts of couples like them the world over- about my decision might be. I mean, here they were trying so hard to get something that I was deliberately throwing away. It must seem like an ideological slap in the face to them. Infertility by choice. But from where I'm sitting it's the only sane choice. Fertility treatments seem insane to me. Then you end up with abominations like the Octomom. And for what? To add to an already over-populated planet and strained global infrastructure just so your genetic material can get passed on to the next generation? There's plenty of kids out there already waiting for parents. Love is not bound my genetics. Biological relationships don't define who you can love. You want to spread your love? There's entire continents worth of people who could use a fucking hug. Being a parent is not the be all and end all of your identity either. My wife and I love our kids, but I don't think that our lives would somehow have been inferior had we not been able to have them. Illogical social constructions lead to irresponsible decisions which add to all of our problems. Do us all a favour and if you're not sure you want to be a parent then don't. Go and get spayed or neutered right now. If you can't have kids, before you try fertility treatments, see if you can adopt a kid just to see if you'd be deemed to be an acceptable parent. Food for thought.
This article is dedicated to all the brave sperm who gave their lives -often needlessly- on the field of battle over the years. At least now all the rest of them that are left can live out their days peacefully in some sperm resort nestled safely in my testicles hanging out by the pool sipping a bottle of pale ale. They can rest easy knowing that their countrymen have already done their part and sacrificed so much so they could live in relative peace and luxury. Enjoy your retirement you guys. I'll (almost) miss you.
